Poetry, Art, Medicine & Society

Christina’s World

After Wyeth

Formulaic, her arms like sticks, she’s everybody’s
Though I can’t like an object when I’m not painting
Rectitude. This lady invites me
Because she could be somebody else.
I don’t really have studios. Women busy
With my work come alive. Mysterious
Places dream a lot though I find a clearing,
And dry grass isn’t romantic. Her pink dress
And turned back don’t give a damn about you
Just the small shed and tire tracks. A bad disease
Honestly picked the nagging dignity
Of this lady. Nothing foolish, glazed
With nostalgia, she’s happy in a way
A girl posed for the body. So people look
Past maybe for a young man waiting, effective
As gray skies. Realism crawls to the house
On a hill, her weakness not clear, just the want,
American, lost marrow around people’s attics
And farms, history, or my own conscience,
Life the only clue something isn’t right.

—David Moolten

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David Moolten

About me: I'm the author of three books of poetry, Plums & Ashes (Northeastern University, 1994), which won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, Especially Then (David Robert Books, 2005), and Primitive Mood, which won the 2009 T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press, and was published in 2009.

I'm also a physician specializing in transfusion medicine, and I live, write and practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Audio Files

'Cuda(Originally appeared in The Kenyon Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright(Originally appeared in The Southern Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright

I don't yearn for their steep excursion
Into fame and fortune, for it had
The usual price, and Orville died bitter
And Wilbur died young. I envy them
Only the slender and empty distance they left
Between them and a seaside's grassy bluffs
In mild December, the frail ingenuity
Of dreams, a lifetime's hopes made of string and cloth
And a little puttering motor that might have run
A lawn mower if the brothers had put their minds
To one first. For dumb exhilaration, nothing --
Not an F-16 thundering from its base
In Turkey nor my redeye circling O'Hare --
Comes close to what they must have felt
For less than a shaking, clattering minute
Clearing all attachment to the world
Of dickering and petty concerns: for some
No other heaven. So I take note of them
As they took notes from the lonely buzzard, obsessed
To the point of love with the ghostly air
And the small fluttering things that wandered
Through it. Eccentric but never flighty,
Bookish but not above nicking their hands
In bicycle shops and basements, they lived
With their sister and tinkered with the future.
Propelled by ambition, the mandate
It invents, they still heeded the laws
Of nature, trimmed needless weight, saw everything
Even themselves as burden, determined
Not to crash and burn. Sheer will launched them,
Good will, because those first forty yards
Skimming shale and reeds were for everyone.
Face down between the struts, staring at the ground
As it blurred past, they failed like anyone
To grasp the implications. But legs flailing
They hung on, buoyed by never and almost
And then just barely. I could do worse
Than their brief rapture, their common sense
Of purpose. Or I could, if only
For a moment, exalt them, go along
With the jury-rigged myth, the quaint
Contrivance that lets them rise above it all.

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I like the way you combined polyvocality into cut-up technique. Very effective. I particularly a moved by these lines:

…Realism crawls to the house
On a hill, her weakness not clear, just the want

And as you often to, you took me back in time. I remember puzzling, as a child, over this painting in an art book my unaesthetic father bought from a door-to-door salesman in a moment of weakness. Dad hated the painting, thought it was abusive, almost pornographic, in a non-sexual way. I was just puzzled, what is she doing out in the middle of nowhere? How did she get that far pulling herself along like that without being filthy head to foot? Mom’s approach more compassion for the ills another must face. And so, my experience of the painting, growing up in an art-ignorant family, was also polyvocal. The way we experience much of our world.

Thanks for your detailed and personal response to my poem. I’ve had similar experiences along the way, less with my parents than others. I’ve tried to be more stubborn than bitter, though it isn’t always easy.

Okay David, knock it off! Andrew Wyeth, you show off! Why didn’t you pick something harder to handle? I am jealous! Well, not really, just impressed. One of my favorite artists and a great work of his. Christina Olsen had a muscular deterioration when AW painted the work in tempura. The house in the picture is the Olsen’s located in Cushing, Maine. I have always felt this is one of Wyeth’s most dramatic pieces of art. There is the simple beauty of the study and implications about life which haunt all humans. But then that is another discussion. You not only wrote a masterful poem, you instructed.
Regards,
DH

Thank you. I’ve always liked this painting too, even before I knew the facts about it, and then as I got to know more about Wyeth, and Maine, and the Olsons, I became even more enamored of it. I used to think this was an adolescent girl either longing for her simple origins, or bemoaning their constraints. The truth is far more interesting and powerful.

Thank you, I have to say I like the prompt in retrospect, but in the process of doing it I wondered how anything coherent could possibly emerge. I guess there’s more to the subconscious (or whatever influences are there when one discards the usual rational approach) than I thought.

Realism crawls to the house
On a hill, her weakness not clear, just the want,
American, lost marrow around people’s attics
And farms, history, or my own conscience,
Life the only clue something isn’t right.

This is a well crafted work, David. It is a real reflection of the painting. Very neat and concise. The use of terms “arms like sticks” and “dry grass” have a grating edge. Your quest to find a mysterious place,romance or happiness just isn’t fulfilled. Christina has her back turned. I really loved how you painted your words. Thank you.

Thankyou for introducing me to this artist. Initially before I knew the history I thought Christina must have been the subject of domestic abuse .Something wasn’t right about the painting,quite unsettling in fact.I’m alway amazed how an artist can convey mood and feeling through brushstrokes light and shade.I think this Wyeth is a wonderful painter.

‘she’s happy in a way.. a girl posed for the body’ I like these surreal lines,
suggests Christina is alienated from herself
The ending of your poem says it all
‘life the only clue something isn’t right’

Geez David…sooo good….”realism crawls to the house” shouts out to me. Wyeth is not my favourite….BUT i do like his prairie scenes for sure and the christina O painting is wonderful…nicely done…and i like what Mr. DH said how it was painted in tempera.. Im always impressed by your words.

Thanks for your generous feedback. Wyeth was a tough nut. I actually think I find him more interesting–his relationship with his father, his wife, his neighbors, the critics–than most of his work. But all that adds dimension when I look at the paintings.

I know what you mean about liking the prompt in retrospect. Like you, initially I didn’t see how order would come out of chaos. But I think you found the key in selecting material that already has so much meaning for you.

A haunting poem to go with a haunting painting! To the pre-existing triad of model-painter-critic, you add your own poet’s perspective and shaping voice. What could have turned into a noisy “babble” (your own word) by a lesser poet is, instead, made restrained by your mature poetic talent; what could have turned hyper-attentive is kept, instead, a respectful gazing; and what could have turned too public and exposed is, instead, somehow still private and mysterious. The last line of this poem reminds me of the Hamlet drama, of things being rotten in Denmark (this painting’s model was not Danish, but Wyeth’s other model was Scandinavian). Postcript: David — to read a three-part series of poems (by Catherine Staples) inspired by Wyeth’s works, see the Winter 2008 issue of Prairie Schooner.
–Therese L. Broderick

Thanks for your generous and detailed response to “Christina’s World.” Wyeth was quite an enigmatic figure. So much going on underneath the surface. He may have been pegged as a “realist,” but there is a psychological dimension to much of his better work that is overpowering.

I will have to check out the 2008 Prairie Schooner; as it happens Cathy Staples is a friend of mine; she’s local. She’s also a good writer, very lyrical.